Transamerica
Somewhat belatedly and on DVD, I was able to watch Transamerica. Which turned out to be every bit as fantastic as its reputation. It's at once that arch-American genre, a road movie, and a twist on another arch-American thing: I've sometimes made remarks about the absolute dominance of father-son relationships as subjects in tv and movies and the relative lack of mother-son relationships (mother-daughter does exist, though again not nearly as much as father-son or father-daughter), and Transamerica is, well - parent-son. Or, as the director/writer says on the soundtrack, actually a growing up tale for two people. Pre-operative transsexual Bree's challenge at the start isn't to become a woman - she is a woman - it's to become an adult, which despite her years she's not (yet). Speaking of the audio commentary, you've got to love any man who is such a fellow geek that he doesn't just write a Lord of the Rings analysis (Toby's "did you know Lord of the Rings is gay?" speech to impress Bree) in the movie proper but talks in the audio commentary about how his heroine, Bree, is Frodo, and her son Toby is the ring. In that she doesn't want him at first and wants to get rid of him and then he challenges and changes her. (I also was amused by him saying that Kevin Zegers, who plays Toby, is so ridiculously pretty he almost didn't cast him, because, well, yeah. He is.)
Felicity Huffman is so great as Bree, never making her into a caricature, and so touching. Speaking of mother-son relationships: one of the most striking scenes - and cruel scenes - comes when Bree is in a restaurant with her own mother (Fionnula Flanagan, whom I've seen before in The Others, something that didn't occur to me until later because the character is so different and she's that versatile), is after covering herself up for most of the movie finally daring to wear an evening dress and wants so much her parents to see her and accept her as a woman - and the mother looks at the chair, at Bree, and waits. And after a second, it hits you: she expects Bree to do what a man would do, pull out the chair for her. Because she's utterly unwilling to see Bree as anything but her son, not her daughter. And Felicity Huffman's face conveying so much history about that entire relationship - she so deserved that Oscar nomination.
At the same time, it's often a very funny movie, though the gags are never cheap - and based on Bree and Toby being an odd couple, her reserve and primness and caution versus his messiness and general teenage-dom rather than on her being a transsexual or him being a hustler. It's the basic and crucial difference of laughing with, not at the characters. And it's never preachy. Even characters who show up only briefly, like Bree's sister Sydney or Graham Greene's character who befriends the duo on the road and flirts with Bree come across as rounded and three-dimensional.
Now I'm posthumoulsy, so to speak, frustrated it didn't win Oscars galore!
Felicity Huffman is so great as Bree, never making her into a caricature, and so touching. Speaking of mother-son relationships: one of the most striking scenes - and cruel scenes - comes when Bree is in a restaurant with her own mother (Fionnula Flanagan, whom I've seen before in The Others, something that didn't occur to me until later because the character is so different and she's that versatile), is after covering herself up for most of the movie finally daring to wear an evening dress and wants so much her parents to see her and accept her as a woman - and the mother looks at the chair, at Bree, and waits. And after a second, it hits you: she expects Bree to do what a man would do, pull out the chair for her. Because she's utterly unwilling to see Bree as anything but her son, not her daughter. And Felicity Huffman's face conveying so much history about that entire relationship - she so deserved that Oscar nomination.
At the same time, it's often a very funny movie, though the gags are never cheap - and based on Bree and Toby being an odd couple, her reserve and primness and caution versus his messiness and general teenage-dom rather than on her being a transsexual or him being a hustler. It's the basic and crucial difference of laughing with, not at the characters. And it's never preachy. Even characters who show up only briefly, like Bree's sister Sydney or Graham Greene's character who befriends the duo on the road and flirts with Bree come across as rounded and three-dimensional.
Now I'm posthumoulsy, so to speak, frustrated it didn't win Oscars galore!